How to #CitiBikeLikeALocal in New York City

Utilizing existing bike share station maps, urban advocacy group ANALOGUE_interactive aims to make New York City even more walkable.

On October 1st, I along with fellow members of the urban advocacy group ANALOGUE_interactive rolled out the tactical urbanism project #CitiBikeLikeALocal.  For those unfamiliar with tactical urbanism, it is broadly defined as temporary & low-cost projects aimed at making an area more livable.  In this case that area was Lower Manhattan in New York City.  The bike share program here is called CitiBike and its system currently maintains stations throughout Manhattan below Central Park and parts of Brooklyn.

For #CitiBikeLikeALocal, we selected a cluster of 39 stations in New York City to be locations for our “map hack”.

Each station already conveniently has a 5-minute walking radius superimposed upon the city’s streets.  We searched for places of interest (POI) that were unique and often overlooked surrounding these stations. Next, we designed stickers that represented and described each POI. 

The stickers were designed to be fun and light-hearted, hopefully making people smile while simultaneously realizing that such a great diversity of activities is to be had within a short walk of these prominent bikeshare stations.

It is our hope that these stickers get some people walking to find new places within Lower Manhattan.  We also hope that #CitiBikeLikeALocal can be inspiring to people outside of New York City.  Tactical urbanism can be used in many different ways, and anyone that is concerned with the built environment can utilize it to make their own towns true Strong Towns. 

Michael Geller (twitter) is an architect in New York City and an active member of the CNU.  You can find out more about ANALOGUE_interactive at their Tumblr.